for whom the kindly landlady solicited
good luck to be drunk.

CHAPTER XIII. THE MATCH OF FALLOW FIELD AGAINST BECKLEY

The dramatic proportions to which ale will exalt the sentiments within
us, and our delivery of them, are apt to dwindle and shrink even below
the natural elevation when we look back on them from the hither shore of
the river of sleep--in other words, wake in the morning: and it was with
no very self-satisfied emotions that Evan, dressing by the full light of
day, reviewed his share in the events of the preceding night. Why, since
he had accepted his fate, should he pretend to judge the conduct of
people his superiors in rank? And where was the necessity for him
to thrust the fact of his being that abhorred social pariah down the
throats of an assembly of worthy good fellows? The answer was, that
he had not accepted his fate: that he considered himself as good a
gentleman as any man living, and was in absolute hostility with
the prejudices of society. That was the state of the case: but the
evaporation of ale in his brain caused him to view his actions from the
humble extreme of that delightful liquor, of which the spirit had flown
and the corpse remained.

Having revived his system with soda-water, and finding no sign of his
antagonist below, Mr. Raikes, to disperse the sceptical dimples on his
friend's face, alluded during breakfast to a determination he had formed
to go forth and show on the cricket-field.

'For, you know,' he observed, 'they can't have any objection to fight
one.'

Evan, slightly colouring, answered: 'Why, you said up-stairs, you
thought fighting duels disgraceful folly.'

'So it is, so it is; everybody knows that,' returned Jack; 'but what can
a gentleman do?'

'Be a disgraceful fool, I suppose,' said Evan: and Raikes went on with
his breakfast, as if to be such occasionally was the distinguished fate
of a gentleman, of which others, not so happy in their birth, might well
be envious.

He could not help betraying that he bore in mind the main incidents of
the festival over-night; for when he had inquired who it might be that
had reduced his friend to wear mourning, and heard that it was his
father (spoken by Evan with a quiet sigh), Mr. Raikes tapped an egg, and
his flexible brows exhibited a whole Bar of contending arguments within.
More than for the love of pleasure, he had spent his money to be taken
for a gentleman. He naturally thought highly of the position, h